Soccer Dad

Atta-boy

Over the weekend President Bush defended his decision to go to war against Iraq and the Washington Post and NY Times hit back.

The Time weighed in with an editorial, "Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials" which asserts:

The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk.

From an unreliable drunk? The Times's standards must really be low because here's what Edward Jay Epstein wrote about some of reporting and reversals of the Atta in Prague story:

On October 27th, the New York Times published an extraordinary refutation of its October 20th story, co-written by Patrick E. Tyler and John Tagliabue . This piece asserted that, contrary to the prior denial, sources confirmed that the meeting had in fact taken place.

The Times story provided a number of new details, such as a Czech member of parliament, who had been briefed by the Czech intelligence services on this issue, said he “believed the meeting with Atta may have been captured by airport surveillance cameras.” This would imply that the meeting took place at the Prague airport. It also reported that on Friday April 20th, Hynek Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, had al-Ani expelled from the Czech Republic for activities incompatible with his diplomatic status.

Kmonicek, who was quoted in the Times story, explained Al-Ani’s expulsion was connected to his meeting with Atta. "It's not a common thing for an Iraqi diplomat to meet a student from a neighboring country.” Atta had been a student in Hamburg. If al-Ani’s expulsion proceeded from his meeting with Atta, then clearly Czech intelligence had identified Atta some four months before the September 11th attack.

The New York Times did not, however, rely solely on Czech sources to publish such a corrective story. Tyler and Tagliabue also confirmed the story with US ‘law enforcement officials’ and the White House. By that time, the FBI had pieced together Atta’s movements from INS files, car rental records, vehicles, airlines reservations data and other documents. These files showed Atta’s entries into the US when he used his passport, when he rented and returned vehicles, and some flights he had booked.

The story stated “Federal law-enforcement officials said the Prague meeting fits into Atta's itinerary this way: On April 4 he was in Virginia Beach. He flew to the Czech Republic on April 8 and met with the Iraqi intelligence officer, who was identified as Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. By April 11, Atta was back in Florida renting a car.”

The New York Times also said “A senior Bush administration official Friday night indicated the Czech decision to go public with the information about the meeting took Washington by surprise. “As for the meeting itself, the official said, "We are not sure we know exactly the full meaning of this, but we have known about it for some time." So presumably the President had known that one of the September 11 hijackers was observed by the Czech intelligence contacting an Iraqi official in Prague in April 2001.

So the Times after writing that the meeting didn't take place reported a reversal, acknowledging that the meeting took place, citing Czech sources and the FBI. Were they all drunk? (The Times editorial seemingly refers to a single drunk.)

In the end Epstein concludes:

What changed in this ping-pong journalism therefore was not any new revelations— or retractions— but the introduction of an anonymous “senior administration source” with an unknown agenda, whose claim that “the Czechs” doubted the meeting took place, has now been directly denied by the relevant officials.

In a Slate article Epstein lays out how the denial of the meeting occurred:

In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times, citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car." Newsweek reported that, "the FBI pointed out Atta was traveling at the time [in early April 2001] between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va.," adding, "The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts." And intelligence expert James Bamford, after quoting FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that the FBI "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," reported in USA Today, "The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met the Iraqi in Prague."

All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.

(I have nothing but contempt for the vile Bamford. If he believed something, it better be confirmed by another source. In this case his belief turned out to be false.)

In a note at the end, Christopher Hitchens, while proclaiming his personal (and reciprocal) loathing of Edward Jay Epstein, nonetheless supports Epstein's reconstruction.

Atta's Prague meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent doesn't prove that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. But it does illustrate a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. It was a connection that any administration would have been irresponsible to ignore.

UPDATE: Thanks to Secular Blasphemy (who added his own thoughts) and Just One Minute for linking. Seixon in an e-mail sent a link to his post explaining the "drunk" reference and skewering Richard Clarke with a single thrust:

Clarke was on the show to promote his new fictional book The Scorpion's Gate which sounded eerily like the fantasy world he has created in his head about the world we are currently living in. Clarke continues with his fictional story-telling:

CLARKE: He had the best way of picking, you know there's all sorts of intelligence out there, and he picked out the worst reports. So the Mohammad Atta report is from a drunk, literally, we know that.

You have to love it when former government officials like Clarke feign knowledge like this. Where did Clarke get this information from? You can't even make this stuff up, it is just too stereotypical but oh so true - a New York Times editorial from Tuesday:

One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk.
Literally, Clarke, you read a New York Times editorial and believed every word of it and asserted it as fact on TV. There's just one problem: it isn't true.

The "Prague Connection" did not come from an unreliable drunk, it came from the Czech intelligence service. The drunk that the New York Times has (I'm so sure) inadvertently conflated with the Atta reporting is none other than the infamous "Curveball". He has absolutely nothing to do with the Prague incident, Newsweek reported back in July that "Curveball" was:

A self-proclaimed chemical engineer who was the brother of a top aide to Iraqi National Congress chief Ahmad Chalabi, Curve Ball had told the German intelligence service that Iraq had a fleet of seven mobile labs used to manufacture deadly biological weapons. But nobody inside the U.S. government had ever actually spoken to the informant—except the Pentagon analyst, who concluded the man was an alcoholic and utterly useless as a source. He recalled that Curve Ball had shown up for their only meeting nursing a "terrible hangover."

Literally, Clarke just got duped by a New York Times editorial and served up the king size whopper they sold him on national television. Are there any Clarke fans in the house? How does your man look now?

The Pink Flamingo Bar and Grill revisits the Atta-Prague connection in tabular form.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Al Qaeda, Mohammed Atta,President Bush.

Posted by SoccerDad at November 16, 2005 7:40 PM